New engine releases & news H1 2026

[Damir]

The engine is useless.

[BrendanJNorman]

A very (very) interesting chess project !

https://github.com/jay-codes-chess/human-chess-engine

My & ChatGPT logo:

How do you guys find this stuff so quickly?

Here's the story:

I'm sure some of you have heard of "OpenClaw" (formerly known as moltbot and clawdbot) - its an open source bot which can take any LLM, use it as a brain and work basically 24/7. It is even proactive and will work without guidance.

I created one, named it "Jay" and got him working on my "dream" engine.

Problem is, he is running on a Mac and has no windows environment for debugging.

Maybe one of our geniuses in the community can figure out what is causing it not to run, but as you guys know, I can't code if i life depends on it.

I do plan to give "Jay" some way of running on Windows though. We'll see.

The project is mostly curiosity (if he could pull it off), but also. personal passion.

Nobody was supposed to use it yet, but Jay thought the easiest way to give me binaries to test was to just create releases.

Impressed by how fast our community found it. Still a LOT of passion for computer chess here.

[AdminX]

A very (very) interesting chess project !

https://github.com/jay-codes-chess/human-chess-engine

My & ChatGPT logo:

How do you guys find this stuff so quickly?

Here's the story:

I'm sure some of you have heard of "OpenClaw" (formerly known as moltbot and clawdbot) - its an open source bot which can take any LLM, use it as a brain and work basically 24/7. It is even proactive and will work without guidance.

I created one, named it "Jay" and got him working on my "dream" engine.

Problem is, he is running on a Mac and has no windows environment for debugging.

Maybe one of our geniuses in the community can figure out what is causing it not to run, but as you guys know, I can't code if i life depends on it.

I do plan to give "Jay" some way of running on Windows though. We'll see.

The project is mostly curiosity (if he could pull it off), but also. personal passion.

Nobody was supposed to use it yet, but Jay thought the easiest way to give me binaries to test was to just create releases.

Impressed by how fast our community found it. Still a LOT of passion for computer chess here.

Funny, My youngest son just setup one (OpenClaw) on his PC and called it "Mother". Mother do this, and mother do that ... Drives my wife crazy! He says it with a European accent of course.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi there,

we shouldn't forget about engine updates in the thread about engine updates. Here are the updates from the last few days. That's right, or visitors think that all programmers are enjoying their well-deserved retirement. Bob only and a very small group of others are in ...

Tarnished 5.0 Hero
https://github.com/Bobingstern/Tarnished
Anik Patel, USA

Odonata 1.1.0
https://github.com/akanalytics/odonata
Andy Watkins, England

Zangdar 6
https://github.com/Carbecq/Zangdar
Philippe CHEVALIER, France

Sturddle 2.5.0
https://github.com/cristivlas/sturddle-2
Cristian Vlasceanu, Romania

Bagatur 5.4
https://github.com/bagaturchess/Bagatur
Krasimir Topchiyski, Bulgaria

Rusti-Rival 1.0.26
https://github.com/chris-moreton/rusty-rival/tags
Chris Moreton, England

PZChessBot 6.1
https://github.com/kevlu8/PZChessBot
Kevin Lu, William Ma, Canada

Can be follow on my overview also.
Without advertising, hidden statistics, or all that confusing stuff!

https://www.amateurschach.de/main/_engines.htm (well-assorted to release date of engines)
https://www.amateurschach.de/main/_engines-a.htm (alphabetic order of engines)

Best
Frank

PS:
Does anyone have any ideas for solving sleep problems before I flood the whole forum with news? No, no... I'm just kidding.

[Carbec]

Unfortunately, version 6 is bugged. It seems that I am cursed with each release

[Aleks Peshkov]

Petrel 3.3 (NNUE) and Petrel 2.3 (PeSTO) released.

Minor update. I expect 30-50 Elo gain from 3.2 and 2.2.
Linux binaries. Still no any Windows builds from me.

github Petrel 3.3
github Petrel 2.3

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Philippe,

hope you can find the problems.
The French programs are the first, after Stockfish I will test with my ETOC-G idea.

Reason is very simple:
French programmers helping me in Winboard and Arena times most with Website activities, ideas and give me 100% support, also great support for Martin Blume. French programmers powered Winboard a lot, without all they work they do ... long years ago, but never I forget it.

The trophy for the tournament in Massy (French programmers computer chess tournament) comes from me in combination with a deal with the German chess magazine CSS ... as thank you.

So, each French programmer are allways in first position (in my brain).
And Zangdar is very strong and must be test very soon.

Best
Frank

So I have a hell of a lot of respect for it.
Franck ZIBI, Lucas or Christian BARRETAU, all the others ... so nice guys. Franck ZIBI was the French answer to Rudolf Huber. Rudolf Huber is a German programmer (SOS). At this time all German programmers I know had the same opinion. The programmer with the most knowledge about programming in Germany. For an example: Opinion from World Champion Stefan Meyer-Kahlen at this time, but not only Stefan say that. Franck ZIBI was the French answere.

Now you must take over the inheritance Philippe.



It also fits somehow... a country to fall in love with.

[ChickenMan4236]

Zeppelin v1.2.0 has been released
- Improved move ordering

https://github.com/jszczerbinsky/zeppel ... tag/v1.2.0
http://zeppelin.bot.nu/versions/

[Jjaw]

The engine is useless.

I agree, it is a useless buggy piece of junk

[Tibono]

The engine is useless.

I agree, it is a useless buggy piece of junk

With regards to a release that was NOT intended to be used and NOT suggested nor advertised to do so, the first comment was a fact and would have been better said "useless so far". On another hand, the second comment is really unfair, not nice and very unfriendly to the author. Shame on you.
Eric